


Everything is Going to Be Okay

by raven_rising



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Bellarke, Character Study, F/M, Gen, If You Squint - Freeform, Tiny bit of shipping, character introspection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-22
Updated: 2014-11-22
Packaged: 2018-02-26 13:44:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,182
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2654165
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/raven_rising/pseuds/raven_rising
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Abby. Octavia. Raven. Clarke.<br/>Four short (drabble length, really) character self-examinations. <br/>Very light Bellarke in the last chapter, hence the relationship tag.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Abby Griffin

**Author's Note:**

> X-posted on Tumblr and perhaps eventually ff.net.

Dr. Abigail Griffin knows she is lying to herself. She sits across from Raven and feels her heart beat a staccato rhythm as she is told her daughter is no longer a child by the youngest mechanic in decades.   
  
_"I had no other options,"_ she thinks.   
Thelonious gives the command for that metaphorical trigger to be pulled.  
  
She stares at Jake and clutches at Clarke, but she can still see Chancellor Jaha from the corner of her vision give his nod.   
  
_"I had no other choice,"_ she thinks. Jake would have incited mass panic and Thelonious promised that he would talk Jake out of spreading the ill news-promised that he would find a way to save him. Her husband was always honest to a fault and it is a trait her daughter shares.  
  
"You get to go to Earth," she tells Clarke. She smiles at her as if her only progeny should be ecstatic that she’s been handed a suspended sentence. Clarke’s eyes are bright shining gems in the moment before the tranquilizer kicks in and she can almost convince herself they shimmer so due to excitement.   
  
She remembers sitting in her apartment alone thinking of Jake and how he was, quite literally, ripped away. She thinks of Clarke locked in a small box, dreaming of freedom and her father. She remembers breathing in the recycled air and thinking it was strange and unnatural but not quite knowing how or why and thinking, _"What now?"_  
  
Now, she stands on Earth in a downed spaceship, somewhere she thought she would never be, and orders that no one is allowed to leave. Clarke stares at her, a gaze that she inherited from her father, but mistrust is added where it never was before.   
Time apart and Earth, where truths have come to light, has altered them both in ways she never expected. She wonders if the chasm might be too wide to bridge.  
She could let Clarke and Bellamy go after the others, but she has decided. Truth rings in her heart and her head as she walks away.  
  
 _"I had other choices. Jake would’ve chosen differently, but I have to believe…everything’s going to be okay."_


	2. Octavia Blake

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "I'm not afraid," she thinks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally I posted these on Tumblr all together, but it works better as separate chapters here.

Octavia stares into the hole that serves as her prison and as her safety.  She hates and loves this place she calls hers. Sometimes she feels like the weight of her fear could somehow cause the paneling that makes up the floor above her to collapse. The dark presses in on her and _oh_ , how she longs for the light. Every time she climbs down and says goodbye to the artifice that is sunlight on the Ark, she wonders if her brother and mother will be there to greet her when next she emerges.  
  
"I’m not afraid," she whispers, she _thinks_ , because she is not to make noise.   
  
Her brother murmurs to her that she has to conquer her fears-slay her demons- and she’s trying so hard to do just that.   
  
Octavia quickly decides she loves the forest that surrounds her from the moment she is free. She presses her heels into the soil just a little deeper and lives for what feels like truly the first time. She never believed that she would ever get to experience a world so wide open and for the taking as this one called earth. Still, there are moments where the complete lack of safety presses in on her. _"I’m not afraid,"_ she tries to convince herself before the wall goes up.  
  
Gradually, any fear she experiences fades. She quite adamantly decides that she will not fear for she has had enough of it-enough of her heart pounding as darkness closes in on her; of when a clock beeps for an inspection; of realizing that she might cease to exist while staring at the underside of a false floor. She does not want to ever feel caged again.

For so long, Octavia and her brother have depended on only each other, but now they must put trust into others.

"May we meet again," they murmur to each other. It is a fervent hope and a prayer and it is tinged with both fear and love for each other. They do not know what the future brings but hopefully that hope is realized.  
  
"Lincoln, I’m scared," she confesses. She hates the way the fear makes her feel more than how she hates the way the poison feels as it eats away at her. Her eyesight swims as Lincoln's pace increases.  
  
 _"I’m afraid,"_ she thinks as she watches Lincoln fight…just before the darkness sweeps across her vision and pulls her under.  
  
 _"I’m not afraid,"_ she thinks as Bellamy draws her into a hug and her eyes prickle with tears at the thought of safety. Lincoln is dead and she mourns for him, but her grief is not the sensation of a dry mouth and her skin blossoming with the sweat that is present when she feels fear. Instead it is a pressure that seems to take root and bloom across the expanse of her chest. She almost feels that she cannot control her lungs enough to draw in air.  
  
Bellamy passes her a pack and grins at her in that annoying older brother way he has before they head off into the forest.   
_"Everything’s going to be okay,"_ she thinks as she listens to the wildlife sing its song around her.


	3. Raven Reyes

Raven has always been a being full of motion. With more determination and drive in her little finger than most people in their whole bodies, she is good at what she does.  
  
"Places to go," she smirks as she feels the artificial gravity weigh on her. Sometimes she thinks she could fly if she could just see a bird do it first.

Her sleeves are rolled up and a trickle of blood winds down her temple as she spins in the droplets of water. She never thought she would ever get to feel something as simple, but beautiful, as rain does. Her feet are sure under her as she feels the crunch of leaves for the first time and she feels like she does not need them because surely she could take flight.

When Raven awakes from surgery, she is surprised by how well she feels for just having had a bullet in her spine. She stares up at the nylon that comprises the ceiling of the tent as it flutters in the light breeze and thinks that she is going to be fine once her pain fades. As sweat gathers at her temples and Abby Griffin is fruitlessly testing the dead nerves for the prickle of sensation she thinks, _"What’s the point?"_  
  
There is a second where she cannot quite catch her breath once that flits through her mind. She has always had an incredible drive towards survival and to think she might have no purpose hurts more than the sharp stab of pain in her spine; it hurts more than the bitter taste of Finn’s betrayal or her mother’s abandonment.  
  
Raven knows how to make things work. She can easily stare at bits and bobs of metal and figure out how to connect two completely different parts to make a whole and she is frustrated that she cannot solve this problem of dead synapses and tendons. After Finn and Abby clear out she lies in silence and stares, unmoving, at her toes. She wiggles the right phalanges and turns her attention to the left and exerts whatever will she has to get them to _move, please just a little._ It is a plea that goes unanswered and she thinks…  
 _"I’m useless."_

 

"Sucks, but..I'm dealing with it," she assures Clarke. " _Really?"_ her mind whispers. She remembers spinning so easily in the drizzle of rain.  
  
Later she stands at the fence and stares blankly as her friends go off on a rescue mission that she cannot partake in. The ache in her heart creeps back in, sharp like the pain was in her spine and it makes her a little brittle. She could almost see herself crumbling into little pieces and letting the wind carry her away. She stares down at the brace giving her support where her brain and tendons and muscles cannot and thinks, again, that she is useless.  
  
Her thoughts must be cyclical because she again thinks of being left behind and abandoned. She sees the future in a hazy daydream of standing on her own two legs, regardless of the fact that only one is still with her and decides in that moment that she really is dealing with it from this moment on.  
  
There is a difference between now and moments ago in that her truth takes over. She heaves a heavy breath in and scents the crispness of the pines and the coppery tang of iron that is the downed Ark.  
"Everything’s going to be okay," she breathes out. It is something she has no choice but to believe in because it has been an anthem of her entire life.  
 _"I won’t be left behind,"_ she thinks.


	4. Clarke Griffin

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "I’m sorry," she thinks...

Clarke has the ability to be honest with everyone but herself it seems. It is a trait she didn’t realize she had until she had two feet firmly planted on the dirt of planet earth. Clarke believed she had the ability to separate herself from her emotions. Under the tutelage of her mother in the medical ward of the Ark, she learned to flip that switch and seemingly separate herself from the chaos around her. It is not different planet-side until she comes to the realization of how much the chaos bleeds into everything that happens here like the radiation of a hundred nuclear warheads.  
  
She does not pay much attention to her control when her father is floated. All she feels is the grief and guilt pressing in on her until she cannot draw breath and _I’m sorry, I’m so sorry_ becomes her new mantra.  
She stares at the night sky those first nights and thinks of how her father will never get to see the terrifying beauty of this place-of the way the stars shine and the air smells and the wildlife replaces the hum of metal machinery. She feels the weight of his watch on her wrist and lets it serve as a metaphorical compass rose to point her towards good decisions.  
  
 _"I’m sorry,"_ she thinks just before she removes the wristband and sets her mother on a path of mourning. She is not sure entirely what she is apologizing for, but she wants her mother to feel at least a portion of the bitterness that she herself cannot wash away.  
  
 _"I’m sorry,"_ she thinks as she kneels before the grave that cocoons the empty shell that is the body of her best friend. She knows she should have believed in him more, as he did in her and that things might have been different if she had just stayed calm and in control.

"You want me to forgive her," she tells the hallucination of her father. She is not quite sure how to do that but more importantly she realizes that she cannot always rely only on her head, because sometimes her head and her heart team up on her.  
  
 _"I’m sorry,"_ she thinks as she pulls the lever that condemns people she cares for to a horrible death by flames and unimaginable pain.  
  
 _"I’m sorry,"_ she thinks as she flees from Mount Weather and leaves behind those she was trying to rescue before they ever realized the true danger.  
  
 _"I’m sorry,"_ she thinks as she presses her palms into Anya’s bullet wound as if she somehow possesses the ability to heal through sheer want.  
  
She runs to Bellamy with absolute joy, realizing she does not need control here. She flings her arms around him and presses a smile into his skin and her heart flutters as his own envelope her. It feels like absolution-a balm after the burn has long since set in and caused blisters.  
  
She does not think nor say that she is sorry in that moment because it is unneeded. Instead she thinks of the future, of the want to press her lips to his and have him desire it too.  
  
Clarke can feel the gravitas of his stare as the fire warms her face.  
She almost speaks her apologies when he mentions her closing the dropship door.    
  
"You did what you had to do," he states.  
  
That moment is her true absolution, even more so than the way he huffed a laugh and swayed them back and forth while they embraced. She can depend on him for the truth like she always has-she knows that he would not lie to her. He stares at her as if she holds the answers to a cipher he has long puzzled over; like she could be the calm to his storm.  
  
 _"Everything’s going to be okay,"_ she thinks, because she feels like he would try and move mountains if she just asked.  
  
She genuinely hopes that her wish comes true.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Completed! I wrote this late last night, sort of a drabble challenge? I tend to ramble in writing so I wanted to see if I could attempt any kind of emotion while not over writing details.  
> The idea I really and truly started this out with was going to be a truth and a lie, as evidenced by the end of Abby's bit, but it evolved from there into something else.  
> Are you still reading this? You should speak up and talk to me in that box below. That's a grand idea.


End file.
